Page 66 - PPW (Paper Proposal Writing)

Tenses Rules/ Functions Example

✓ It is used when referring to Jones (2012) found …
information from outside Last century, physicians
sources considered that women faced
Past tense
✓ To describe a fact, law, or more anxiety than men.
finding that is no longer However, current studies
considered valid and relevant. showed that …. (Sanger, 2023).

✓ It is used to express an action
which has been finished at
Nightingale (2017) has found
unspecified time in the past
...
but having an effect or
The study of Brown et al.
Present perfect tense influence on the present.
(2020) have proven that …
✓ to emphasize how current

studies are directly relevant to

the description of author's own
research report
Adapted from: https://graduate.unl.edu/connections/writing-about-your-research-verb-tense;
https://www.jstor.org/stable/40171561#:~:text=Present%20perfect%20tense%20in%20citations,writer's%20own%20research%20write%2
Dup.

In other citation styles such as in MLA, present tense is used in writing citations. Please
consider the citation style used in writing a paper and use the tenses consistently.

a.

Underline the error found in the use of past tense and present perfect tense
in the following citations and correct them.

No Citation Correction

1 Hasan and Abdullah (2020) has observed that people income did not Have observed
contribute significantly to the increasing demand of masks during the

Covid-19 quarantines.

2 It is evidenced that social media bring some positive impacts to

student’s creativity (Soleh, 2022).

3 “The government has not making plannings to simplify tax system for
SME’s” (Gunawan, 2019).

58 Paper Proposal Writing